In
Short: Extensive CGI sequences, constant explosions, and female eye candy are the only things this overly long, by-the-numbers good-guys-versus-bad-guys marketing machine disguised as a movie has going for it.

Crash, Boom, Bang!Transformers Sequel Is More of the Same Stupid Stuff

As Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen begins, bombastic director Michael Bay takes us back to the dawn of civilization on earth, to the time of the caveman. That opening sequence is incredibly on point, for the level of intelligence it takes to watch this noisy, jumbled, disjointed flick is right on par with those Cro-Magnon humans.

As in the original 2007 hit film, also directed by Bay, the Transformers are aliens from a distant planet who inhabit earth hidden in everyday mechanical devices—they are especially partial to GM cars and trucks, one of the many product-placement elements peppered throughout these Hasbro toy-based tales—who are fractured into two distinct clans. The Autobots are the good guys, the Decepticons the bad; the bad guys want to take over earth and wipe out the humans, the good guys want to stop them.

And that’s pretty much the plot of this silly sequel, designed to sell products to boys of all ages, with a strong dose of titillation thrown in for good measure. Perhaps the most important elements of this film are the two female leads, Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas, eye candy extraordinaire, paired with the well-created special effects as the rival Transformers do battle for an interminable 2.5 hours.

Sure, Bay tries to throw in some actual human emotion, as leading man Shia LaBeouf struggles to say “I love you” to his hottest-babe-on-the-planet girlfriend Fox (yeah, right, we’re buying that one) and later bravely saves his parents from certain death, but it is all so cheesy and false that not even one of our heartstrings gets pulled.

Then there’s the often incomprehensible, yet always mega-decibel dialogue of the Transformers, including two new ones that are portrayed as idiot twins with an uncomfortably racist slant to their hip-hop dialogue (JarJar Binks is now officially off the hook in that regard), and the long, drawn-out battle scenes in which it is virtually impossible to discern who’s who, good or bad. Put those two elements together and the final result is a movie that only an eight-year-old kid (who is not supposed to be seeing this PG-13 rated mess anyway) or someone with that level of intelligence could possibly enjoy.